John Eliot News

Under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the evening exuded Romantic electricity - of a calibre not always the most musical or Berliozian.

 Carnegie Hall's 2018-2019 season is fast approaching, and we are looking forward to exciting new projects and outstanding concerts! Highlights below include Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala with the San Francisco Symphony led by Michael Tilson Thomas as he embarks on his season-long Perspectives series; the launch of pianist Yuja Wang's Perspectives series; concerts curated and performed by Chris Thile, holder of the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair; the debut of Decoda, featuring alumni of Ensemble Connect; concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the New York String Orchestra and the 90th birthday of pianist Leon Fleisher; and, coming in spring 2019: a citywide festival-Migrations: The Making of America.

Single tickets are on sale now for the 2018-19 Harris Theater Presents season, a roster that includes music and dance artists of the highest caliber dedicated to preserving artistic lineage, reimagining classical works, and embarking on innovative, multi-disciplinary collaborations.

Carnegie Hall's has announced some changes to its 2018-2019 schedule. See the newly announced details below!

Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique led by Sir John Eliot Gardiner will stage a special one-off performance of Giuseppe Verdi's legendary Messa da Requiem at London's Westminster Cathedral on 18 September at 7.30pm. This unique concert will be in support of Cancer Research UK and dedicated to the memory of Richard Fitzgerald, Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras' long-standing stage manager who sadly passed away from lung cancer in August 2016.

The Harris Theater has launched a new jazz concert series, extending its diverse music offerings into the summer months and expanding opportunities for audiences to experience the performing arts in non-traditional formats at an accessible price point.

The University Musical Society (UMS), under the leadership of President Matthew VanBesien, today announces its 140th season in 2018-19 with an initial slate of 40 performances and events. One of the country's most acclaimed performing arts presenters, UMS honors its past by showcasing respected ensembles and performers with whom it has enjoyed rich relationships, and fully embraces the future as initiator, incubator, and accelerator for innovative new works and projects. This potent combination infuses the anniversary season with dynamic and diverse voices and perspectives featuring artists at the top of their game - celebrating the canon, taking risks, moving genres in new directions, disrupting stereotypes, and surprising audiences.

Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons returns with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra for two back-to-back concerts this May in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage. On Friday, May 4 at 8:00 p.m., the orchestra performs Rossini'sWilliam Tell Overture; Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19, featuringFrank Peter Zimmermann; and Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, 'Eroica.' The following evening, Saturday, May 5 at 8:00 p.m., the orchestra and Maestro Jansons perform Mahler's massive Symphony No. 7 in E Minor.

 Concerts at Saint Thomas will give the season's final performance with the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys on May 9, singing music written for the Feast of the Ascension. The program features Bach's Cantata 37, his first written for the Ascension, and his 'Lutheran' Mass in G minor, as well as Vivaldi's lesser-known setting of the Introduzione e Gloria, RV 588.

The Harris Theater announced last night the five artists and ensembles appearing in the 2018-19 Mix at Six series: British-Bahraini jazz trumpeter Yazz Ahmed, Afro-Cuban vocalist Dayme Arocena, Spanish guitarist Pablo Sainz Villegas, Quebecois circus arts ensemble Cirque Eloize, and some of the best young dancers from right here in our city - the Chicago Academy for the Arts Repertory Dance Company.

Last night, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center artist Sean Lee announced the ensemble's upcoming season at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance from the Elizabeth Morse Genius Stage. The 2018-19 series will mark the eighth year of CMS's ongoing residency in Chicago.

With its 2018-2019, 40th-anniversary season on the horizon, Les Arts Florissants begins 2018 celebrating signal achievements for the organization and founder-conductor William Christie. On January 29, 2018, the new Fondation Les Arts Florissants-William Christie held its first board meeting, marking the official launch of the institution that will perpetuate William Christie's life's work in music and the art of gardens. The acclaimed Les Arts Florissants embraces performance, education, audience development, recording, and publishing. Christie's Thire estate and gardens, and extended projects in the Vendee region of France, were recognized in 2017 as a Centre Culturel de Rencontre (Cultural Center).

Houston Symphony Board President Janet F. Clark, on behalf of the Board of Trustees and Music Director Andr s Orozco-Estrada, announced today the appointment of 19-year veteran arts administrator John Mangum to the position of Executive Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Houston Symphony. Mangum will hold the Margaret Alkek Williams Executive Director/CEO Chair and will begin his new post April 16, 2018. Mangum succeeds Mark C. Hanson, who stepped down from this role in July 2017 to lead the San Francisco Symphony.

Houston Symphony Board President Janet F. Clark, on behalf of the Board of Trustees and Music Director Andr s Orozco-Estrada, announced today the appointment of 19-year veteran arts administrator John Mangum to the position of Executive Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Houston Symphony. Mangum will hold the Margaret Alkek Williams Executive Director/CEO Chair and will begin his new post April 16, 2018. Mangum succeeds Mark C. Hanson, who stepped down from this role in July 2017 to lead the San Francisco Symphony.

The San Francisco Early Music Society's 2017-18 concert season continues the weekend of February 2 with three concerts by AGAVE BAROQUE with guest countertenor Reginald Mobley performing music of love and loss in the shadow of the Thirty Years' War (1618 1648), works by Johann Christoph Bach, Matthias Weckmann, David Pohle, Johann Pachelbel and more.

The Colburn School announces the appointment of esteemed oboist Ram n Ortega Quero to its faculty. Quero, who is currently Principal Oboe of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the incoming Principal Oboe of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will accept students to his oboe studio starting in fall 2018.

Orchestra of St. Luke's (OSL) 43rd season continues in 2018 with 43 performances in 10 venues throughout New York City. The winter spring calendar offers wide-ranging programs from intimate chamber music concerts devoted to Baroque, Classical, and Romantic repertoire to a world premiere at Carnegie Hall by one of today's most lauded composers. Additionally, the Orchestra will play music for a legendary dance institution's Lincoln Center season and collaborate with a renowned choral group on a program that juxtaposes an established work with a new, dramatic oratorio based on the Orpheus myth.

The critically acclaimed Shakespeare's Globe production of Farinelli and the King, starring three-time Tony Award-winner (Twelfth Night, Jerusalem, Boeing-Boeing) and Academy Award-winner (Bridge of Spies) Mark Rylance, begins tonight, December 5, 2017 in advance of an opening night on Sunday, December 17, 2017 at Broadway's Belasco Theatre (111 West 44th Street).

Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Jane Moss today announced Lincoln Center's 2017 White Light Festival, which runs from October 18 through November 15. With more than 35 events presented in 13 venues throughout the city, including U.S. and New York premieres and nine commissions, the eighth annual international festival will explore transcendence, interior illumination, and faith in the human spirit, as exhibited through artistic expression across continents and centuries. The multidisciplinary festival takes its name from a quotation by Estonian composer Arvo Part: "Icouldcomparemymusic to white light, which contains all colors. Only a prism can divide the colors and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener."

After its celebrated reinterpretations of Butterfly and Carmen last spring, HEARTBEAT OPERA the daring young company whose unconventional orchestrations and stagings of classic operas have been called 'a radical endeavor' by Alex Ross in The New Yorker launches its fourth season with its Annual Halloween Drag Extravaganza, this year titled ALL THE WORLD'S A DRAG! Shakespeare in love...with opera. Three performances take place at National Sawdust on October 30 at 7:30 p.m. and October 31 at 7.30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.